Should I Roll the Dice on an iPadOS 16 Public Beta?
Can I wait until September for iPad Pro 12.9” external monitor support?
I’ve been banging on about the iPad supporting external monitors for a long time. Year in fact. I could accept that the iPad couldn’t while it didn’t support a mouse or touchpad. What would be the point? If an app was on the external monitor, you wouldn’t be able to interact with it. Not supporting an extra monitor made sense.
But then it turned out that the iPad could support a mouse, using an accessibility feature. I bought a Logitech MX mouse and (blow me down) it worked! Wonderfully, with the odd hiccup every so often, but still wonderfully.
I wasn’t the only one to think that using a mouse with Apple’s multitouch tablet was cool, and Cupertino made mouse and touchpad support a full citizen of the iPad world with iOS 13.4. That was in March 2020. Yes, 2020! It feels as if iPads have supported mice forever, but it’s only been two years.
The weird thing was that Apple hadn’t previously pushed out a major new feature in an operating system point release before. I got suspicious about that, and thought I was being clever.
I wrote this:
https://willjmurphy.page/this-simple-change-will-take-the-ipad-to-the-next-level-ac47de66a8f0
My thinking went something like this. Why would Apple add mouse and trackpad support to a touchscreen device unless they were about to go the whole nine yards? Surely, proper support for monitors was on the cards?
Yes, that’s right. I said properly support. It was possible to plug a monitor into an iPad and get something apart from a blank screen, but all it did was mirror what was on the touchscreen … badly. iPads have always had good screens, so most monitors could never quite match Apple’s tablet.
Sadly, iOS/iPadOS 14 didn’t add proper external monitor support. That was a bit of a blow because by that time, I rarely used my laptop. I had committed to the iPad Pro 12.9” lifestyle, even though the file selector almost counted as an instrument of torture. (It didn’t remember the last path, so you had to keep digging through a folder hierarchy to select multiple files.)
But it’s okay now if you have the right iPad. M1 iPads running iPadOS 16 will support external monitors properly. They won’t just mirror the touchscreen, they’ll extend it. Just like Samsung and Microsoft tablets have been able to do for ages. There are times it is very painful to be so dedicated to the Apple way of computing.
So, can I wait until September to finally use a monitor with my M1 iPad Pro 12.9”? I managed to resist the temptation to install the developers’ build of iPadOS 16. That wasn’t too hard to do because my iPad Pro is where I write. It’s mission-critical.
The public beta of iPadOS 16 is more tempting. Would Apple allow a badly broken beta go out to non-developers? Probably not deliberately. Most likely.
I do so want to hook up the external monitor currently hanging off my laptop to my iPad. This issue has long ago gone beyond functionality for me.
I. Want. External. Monitor. Support. On. My. iPad. Pro.
I’m already convincing myself that it won’t matter that most of my favourite apps won’t support it properly until the autumn. I’m also telling myself that the odd app crash can be quietly ignored.
Being able to relax and push apps beyond that cursed 12.9” boundary is so enticing and delicious looking. I’ve been denied this so long.
Do you think I’ll wait until September? Me neither.